Fusion confusion

October 08, 2012

A report last week by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs permanent subcommittee on investigations found that fusion centers "often produced irrelevant, useless or inappropriate intelligence reporting" to the Department of Homeland Security. The centers were created to gather intelligence information in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. (Tribune newspapers photo 2006)

Last year, Illinois officials in a regional intelligence-gathering office known as a fusion center alerted federal authorities of a major cyber attack in Springfield. The officials said that a computer hacker in Russia had remotely invaded a local water district's computer control system and sent commands to burn out a water pump.

Sound preposterous? It was. The "intrusion" turned out to be a legitimate remote log-on from an employee working while on a family vacation.

That embarrassment is one of the lighter moments in a blistering report on fusion centers issued last week by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs permanent subcommittee on investigations.

What's a fusion center? Quick history: Fusion centers were created by Congress in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. They were supposed to help break down the "silo" mentality of federal law enforcement officials and promote communication among the FBI, the CIA, and other agencies. They were supposed to make sure that vital anti-terror intelligence was shared at all federal, state and local levels to effectively blunt terrorist plots.

That's not happening, the report concludes: "Fusion centers often produced irrelevant, useless or inappropriate intelligence reporting to DHS, and many produced no intelligence reporting whatsoever." Even worse, investigators say that fusion centers "may have hindered, not aided, federal counterterrorism efforts."

The Senate report demolishes claims by Department of Homeland Security officials that the centers helped uncover terrorist plots, including a 2010 attempt to blow up an SUV in Times Square and a 2009 case in which an Afghan immigrant planned to blow himself up on the subway around the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The report said that law enforcement officers would have done what they did whether or not where was a fusion center.

Instead of focusing on counterterrorism, many of the nation's 70 fusion centers have become clearinghouses for collecting and distributing criminal intelligence, even of the most mundane kind. In 2010, for instance, the Tribune reported that one Maryland fusion center helped police collar thieves in a truck loaded with stolen plastic pallets, the kind used in bakeries and groceries. We're all for fighting local crime, but that wasn't supposed to be the reason DHS flushed as much as $1.4 billion into fusion centers over the past several years.

Investigators found that these centers are adept at one thing: Spending on cool stuff that does little to advance the anti-terror mission — including sport utility vehicles, large-screen televisions, $6,000 laptops and surveillance gadgets. An Arizona fusion center spent some $45,000 on an fully-loaded SUV that a city official commandeered for commuting.

Fusion centers do have powerful defenders. Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn.,said fusion centers "played a significant role in many recent terrorism cases and have helped generate hundreds of tips and leads that have led to current FBI investigations." Sen. Susan Collins of Maine backed Lieberman's defense.

We respect Lieberman and Collins on intelligence issues, but we're with the skeptics on this. The Senate report calls for stronger DHS oversight of fusion centers, improved officer training, elimination of overlapping efforts, and better financial controls so that funding is based on performance. That should have been done all along.

In 2010, former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said of fusion centers: "We thought if we just threw the name out there, built a bunch of them, we'd feel a lot better. And I frankly think there's too many of them."

Agreed. Based on this report, we'd say the number should be closer to zero. Americans aren't made safer by throwing money at fusion centers that don't fulfill expectations.